At the Grand-Théâtre of Marseille, a spectator was requested to vacate his seat. His name was Henri Pranzini. The cabman who had conveyed him through the city had just pointed him out to the constables; certain jewels presented in a house on Rue Ventomagy had raised the alarm. In Paris, meanwhile, the investigators were still pursuing the trail of another man. The connection was to be forged by a watch, a pair of earrings, and a list of stolen effects. The Rue Montaigne affair, which appeared to lose itself in an elusive name, had just taken the train south without warning those who still believed it confined to a Parisian hotel room.
It had all begun in March 1887, at number 17 Rue Montaigne, known today as Rue Jean-Mermoz. In the apartment of Claudine-Marie Regnault, known by the name of Régine de Montille, three persons had been slaughtered: the mistress of the house, her chambermaid Annette Grémeret, and Marie, the latter’s daughter. This child was only twelve years old. Later accounts would linger over Regnault’s elegance, her acquaintances, the fortune of her jewels. Before these matters of curiosity, there was a household where a mother laboured and where her daughter lived beside her. Theft had left three dead women in its wake.
Goron, who took part in the inquiry, relates the discovery in his memoirs. A cook known as Mother Antoine grew uneasy at receiving no answer. The concierge at first reassured her, then ascended the stairs with her. The persistent silence eventually drove them to the police commissary. M. Créneau arrived with a physician, a locksmith, and several officers. Once the door was forced, they discovered Annette, the child, and then Regnault. Gruesome details abound beneath the memoirist’s pen; they add nothing to what truly matters here. A domestic anxiety had just laid bare a triple murder, and the known habits of the occupants already made it plain that an extraordinary catastrophe had occurred.
The first scent bore the name of Geissler. Certain articles and initials appeared to support it. A man of that name had quit a hotel near the Gare du Nord, leaving belongings behind in his room. The detectives seized a valise, linen, and various small effects; in a portion of the press, a coincidence soon hardened into a certainty. Goron retrospectively accords himself the role of the sceptic, less hasty to conclude than his colleagues. We may read his narrative without wholly accepting this self-serving allotment of parts: a police officer’s memoirs also display the manner in which he desires to be remembered.
The inquiry and the gazettes were then contending for the very same intelligence. Goron reports that newsmen, tracing their way back to his cabman, succeeded in locating the visited hotel and gleaning particulars. The magistrate chafed at these indiscretions; yet the police were obliged to employ the newspapers to publish the wanted description and the inventory of the jewels. This contradiction formed almost a second intrigue: men wished to keep secret an operation whose success might depend upon thousands of readers. The published list would serve precisely to connect the gifts bestowed in Marseille with the articles missing from the Rue Montaigne.
Pranzini had taken a room at the Hôtel de Noailles. He received a parcel, rode about in a carriage, passed by Longchamp, and frequented a house on Rue Ventomagy. There, Amélie Fabre and Marie Doury were to recall unusual presents. The apparent value of a watch scarcely accorded with the visitor’s explanations. The jewels were shown to the mistress of the house, who alerted the police. The coachman Berne subsequently enabled them to find the client at the theatre. In Goron’s account, this arrest reached the ears of the Parisian detectives through a journalist, prior to any official dispatches. The memoirist saw in this a bitter lesson upon the sluggishness of administrative channels.
The confrontations in Marseille placed Pranzini before witnesses whom he could not dismiss with a simple denial. Berne had driven his carriage; the women had received him; the hotel staff had witnessed the delivery of the parcel. Before Judge Reverdin, he disputed the gifts, offered alternative explanations, and maintained he was an utter stranger to the crime. Goron recounts that he became convinced of his guilt almost at once. One must distinguish this personal conviction from the evidentiary facts he reports. The silhouette of a man, his gaze, or his manner of answering do not constitute proof; the physical objects, the verified movements, and the testimony of witnesses had to sustain the prosecution.
The parcel posed a peculiar question. Pranzini asserted that it contained watch springs, received from a figure whose identity varied with his replies. The investigators inquired why he had rid himself of it during his drive. Behind these material questions, the route of the plunder began to emerge. Yet the accused still advanced an alibi: in Paris, his mistress could swear that he had passed the night of the crime by her side. So long as this declaration stood, it compelled the examining magistrate to grapple with an obstacle that an accumulation of suspicions could not suffice to resolve.
Madame S., as Goron designates her, retracted her first version. She had wished to shield him, and now affirmed that he had not remained beneath her roof. The confrontation recorded in the memoirs is one of the most painful moments in the dossier. She implores him to explain where he was, to speak what he knows; he holds fast to his tale and disputes her assertions. Her testimony also evoked a confidence in which he was said to have acknowledged being present at Regnault’s, while attributing the bloodshed to other men. This confidence remains reported speech, not a scene of which the chronicler might make himself the invisible witness. It nonetheless gravely undermined his defence.
The trial opened in July. Maître Demange defended Pranzini, who continued to deny the charges. Goron depicts a public clamouring for a glimpse of the accused, indulging in commentary upon the women who thronged the court sessions. This tableau reveals as much of the narrator’s prejudices as of the curiosity of the courtroom. The judicial verdict, however, did not hinge upon this morbid fascination. Pranzini was found guilty and condemned to death. On 31 August 1887, he was executed before the prison of La Grande Roquette. The account of his final religious gesture would later nourish a Catholic memory of the affair, notably surrounding Thérèse of Lisieux; yet a sign construed as repentance does not permit us to discern with certainty the inner state of a condemned man.
Street ballads, the popular press, and police memoirs granted Pranzini a long afterlife on paper. The broadsheet repertoire preserves traces of this broad circulation, from the chronicle of the crime down to titles that promised to lead reader or listener directly to the foot of the scaffold. The jewels had served to run a man to earth; his notoriety subsequently served to sell the tale. Between these two journeys, the most arduous remains the one that leads back to the apartment: to Regnault, to Annette, and to Marie, whose names ought to precede that of the murderer whenever this ledger of blood is reopened.